The Internet, Inequality and Exclusion in Peru: the Social Impact of the Cabinas Públicas

Victoria Holmes The Internet, inequality and exclusion in Peru: the social impact of the cabinas públicas Dissertation presented for the MA in Area Studies (Latin America), Institute of Latin American Studies University of London August 31, 2001 CONTENTS Introduction and methodology…………………………………….. 1 Chapter I The Internet: alternatives of progress and exclusion…………….. 7 Chapter II The development and expansion of the cabinas públicas…………. 12 Chapter III A case study of two cabinas…………………………………………. 17 Conclusions………………………………………………………….. 26 References…………………………………………………………… 29 “Technology is like education – it enables people to lift themselves out of poverty. Thus technology is a tool for, not a just a reward of, growth and development” (UNDP, 2001:27). “Social thought has gained little by attempting to generalize about ‘cyberspace’, ‘the Internet’, ‘virtuality’. It can gain hugely by producing material that will allow us to understand the very different universes of social and technical possibility that have developed around the Internet.” (Miller & Slater, 2000:10) Introduction Peru has been perhaps the most studied of the Latin American countries with regard to the diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs). In the region, it has the most people who use the Internet from public access points (Fernández-Maldonado, 2000a; Proenza et al., 2001:iii), in this case known as cabinas públicas. Indeed, the significant growth in Internet access in Peru1 over the last few years could not have happened without the explosion of the cabinas. This has taken on almost mythical connotations both among Peruvians and non- Peruvians, particularly now that the bridging of the ‘digital divide’2 has attracted the attention of world leaders and become a global objective. The Peruvian model of Internet access has gained international recognition as an example of an alternative solution to the ‘digital divide’, since it emerged ‘spontaneously’ (i.e. without the state playing an active role) and has been more successful – in some aspects – than subsidised Internet access centres which struggle to survive (Fernández-Maldonado, 2000a). Most recently, the Peruvian case was referred to as a “worldwide best practice”(Hilbert, 2001:85). Current estimates suggest that there are over 1000 cabinas nationwide (OSIPTEL, 2001)3, and one study4 conducted in the year 2000 counted 533 in Lima alone. However, despite the high profile and positive coverage of this phenomenon, and although there has been some form of public access to the Internet from Peru since 1994, by December 2000 only 2.8% of the population had used this technology, compared to 42% in the USA and an average of 24% in the EU countries (PC World, 2001a). In Lima, the figure was slightly higher: 18% of the population of Lima aged between 12 and 70 have used the Internet at least once (Apoyo, 2000:5). 41.45% of households in Lima now have at least one member who uses the Internet, and 70% of these users access the Internet from a cabina, where the cost is now up to 70% cheaper than a domestic dial- up connection (INEI, cited in Fernández-Maldonado, 2001). Rightly or wrongly therefore, the Peruvian case seems to have become one of the compulsory examples to illustrate how this new technology has taken on a life of its own in a particular context. The context itself is vital to our understanding of why and how the Peruvian situation developed as it did, since according to Miller and Slater (2000:1) “the Internet is not a monolithic or placeless ‘cyberspace’; rather, it is numerous new technologies, used by diverse 1 According to OSIPTEL (2001) there were 208,000 users in 1998 and over 800,000 by May 2000. 2 The ‘digital divide’ is the uneven diffusion of ICTs (UNDP, 2001:38). 3 This is the most commonly cited figure; however, it first emerged in an article by Lama (1999), cited both in Proenza et al (2001) and Fernández-Maldonado (2000a; 2000b; 2001), so is already two years old. 4 Study conducted by APOYO, information supplied by Venturo (2001). 1 people, in diverse real-world locations… the Internet as a meaningful phenomenon only exists in particular places”. Or, as Ricardo Gómez (2000) has written, The Internet is a hall of mirrors. In its multiple images, its uses reflect the inequalities and injustices of the societies into which it is inserted. Thus, information technologies are not positive or negative in themselves, but neither are they neutral. They take the form and direction of the societies into which they are introduced, and at the same time they help further shape the relations and modes of interaction in these societies. One recent study (Proenza et al., 2001:75) points out that the conditions which were necessary for the ‘success’ of the Peruvian model were quite specific, and included an extensive market of numerous low-income families with a solid educational level, concentrated in a safe area (low incidence of theft) with transportation facilities for whom a computer and Internet connection are too expensive (high individual costs relative to income); professional, trained personnel and a large entrepreneurial informal sector; an open market and strong competition at several levels, particularly among Internet service providers; and a pricing policy that encourages charging for delivery of public services. The chances of this phenomenon being repeated elsewhere may therefore be slim, particularly since, as mentioned above, it developed without the intervention of policymakers. As the title of this paper suggests, the development of Internet access in this particular society must also be read in the context of deep inequalities and exclusions both old and new; a factor which is often overlooked by the more optimistic accounts. These tend to focus on the people who have been able to use the Internet, a minority when all is said and done, rather than on the majority who have not, and the reasons for this. Although Internet use is growing by more than 30% a year in Latin America, this still means that only 12% of individuals will be connected by 2005 (UNDP, 2001:35). Peru itself remains a country with an extremely high variation of regional income, and almost 80% of the total reduction in poverty which took place in the country between 1994 and 1997 was confined to only two regions: Lima and the urban Sierra (World Bank, 1999:1). There were significant improvements in education, health and infrastructure over the same period, but 70% of this took place in cities (idem, 2). Figures for 1996 show that the poorest 20% of Peruvians received only 4.4% of income whereas the top 20% received 51.2% (UNDP, 2001: 183). Figueroa et al. (1996:75) describe Peru as “a country with an extensive history of exclusions” but also state that “[t]here are paths, difficult though they may be, which lead to social, cultural and economic mobility, which do not turn exclusion into a permanent state and synchronous stigma”. Migration and the wider availability of communication media are factors which are identified as making a contribution to greater inclusion (idem, 71). Although illiteracy in Peru continues to fall, the changes in society which mean that mass communications and media now occupy such an central place in everyday life also imply that those who remain illiterate are 2 now more strongly excluded from both rural and urban settings. The growing importance of the Internet can only serve to exacerbate this process, unless something is done to reverse it. There are also specific inequalities related to the infrastructure necessary for Internet access, namely the availability of computers and telephones. Obviously, the cabinas have shown that a lack of these may be solved collectively rather than individually5, but ownership of computers and telephones continue to be the most common indicators in discussions of inequality in access to ICTs. Statistics for Peru show that in 1999, 7% of the total population owned a computer, and 33% owned a telephone. However, when these numbers are broken down into socioeconomic groups (A to E), we find that 82% of group A owned a computer, compared to 26% in group B, 7% in group C, 1% in group D, and no-one in group E. For telephones, the distribution is only slightly more equitable: 96% in group A, 89% in group B, 52% in group C, 14% in group D and 2% in group E (cited in Proenza et al., 2001:13). The importance of such indicators is confirmed by the most recent Human Development Report6, which states that, “[p]articipation in the network age requires diffusion of many old innovations. Although leapfrogging is sometimes possible, technological advance is a cumulative process, and widespread diffusion of older innovations is necessary for adoption of later innovations”(UNDP, 2001:45). As suggested by Fernández-Maldonado (2000; 2001a; 2001b), an awareness of the importance of the informal sector in the Peruvian economy will also be important in our understanding of the development of the cabinas in Lima. According to the World Bank (1999:vi), the informal sector employs a fairly constant 45% of the country’s economically active population in urban areas, though Fernández-Maldonado (2000b) suggests the figure may be up to 60% in Lima. Whilst a full discussion of the debate around the informal sector is beyond the scope of this paper, it is important to point out the dangers of associating this so-called ‘sector’ only with those entrepreneurs who are able to do well out of it as this overlooks the poverty which affects many of whom work as wage employees. Also, the involvement of the informal entrepreneurs in the cabina business was not entirely without precedents, since they had in fact provided some ICT services and products before the emergence of the Internet and the subsequent growth in demand (Fernández-Maldonado, 2001).

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